Onlyborn
by Flyaway21
Summary: Life without her siblings and Sunny turns into something else.
1. Chapter 1

_"You happened to me._

_You were as deep down as I've ever been._

_You were inside me like my pulse."_

― **Marilyn Hacker**

* * *

Violet drank when she thought Sunny couldn't see.

Just enough to blunt her senses, soften the razor sharp edges of their lives into something more manageable. A touch softer was all she needed.

Drank with single minded focus. The exact dosage calculated by her own growing resistance to the gin and moonshine in comparison to the emptiness of her stomach on that particular day.

Horribly intimate with the line between too much and not enough.

Violet pretended not to drink. Sunny pretended not to know.

It was a habit they'd acquired four years earlier, ever since they'd lost Klaus. Lost him, put him down, couldn't find him again.

The night that still came back fractured and panic laced. Screams amid the fire, smoke in her lungs, Violet's hand tightly closed around hers and Klaus just beyond sight, obscured by the billows of smoke, the buffets of ash. They'd heard him calling, clawed towards him just as quickly as Sunny's dislocated shoulder allowed.

In the end, it wasn't fast enough.

When morning dawned, the two sisters were without their brother, dazed and covered in soot.

He was alive, that they knew. A trail of footsteps, scuffed like he'd been dragged, like he'd fought tooth and nail every step of the way.

Violet and Sunny vowed not to rest until they found him.

And four years passed.

* * *

It was an unfairly cold day and Sunny recognized the whiff of gin on the air. Frost concealed the world outside and the two girls huddled around the fireplace that Violet had somehow managed to make cheery despite it being functioned from a missing chunk in the wall.

Sunny was there when it all went wrong.

Violet coughed.

Sunny pushed her nose closer to the book she was reading, eyes steadfast on the blurred words.

Because it was just the burn of liquor, she knew. Violet had swallowed too much at once, overeager because soon it would be their fourth Christmas without Klaus and winters were especially brutal.

Everything happened very quickly after that, snap shots like a camera shuttering.

The coughing that turned into choking, the blue lips that followed, red burst veins amidst the rolling white of her eyes.

The pure frantic chaos when Violet's lungs burned for air and none came.

It took longer than it should have for Sunny to realize that it wasn't the gin.

By that time, Violet's fingers had managed to snag onto Sunny's arms, digging in bruises, her lips stretched into a silent scream for help.

Sunny pressed on her sister's stomach. Once and then harder. When nothing happened, she shoved her fingers down Violet's throat, sobbing, trying to find the _thing_ lodged there.

Nothing. Violet's movements went clumsy and jerky.

A small sane part of Sunny's mind recalled Klaus talking about a tracheotomy before, glasses perched on the edge of his nose, a medical journal in his lap.

Never further than an arm's length from a weapon, Sunny fumbled for the knife that sat on the table, pushed her sister down, cursing at how her hands shook. It took until Violet's eyes were bloodshot through and through, until the knife broke the skin of her throat. Violet didn't seem to notice.

And then Sunny pushed further. Until there was a slight give. Until she hit Violet's windpipe.

The sound of a desperate inhale, the sound of a drowning man allowed air, and Sunny went boneless with relief. A chant of _it worked, it worked, it worked_ replaced the horror.

She couldn't seem to stop crying.

Violet's eyes meet hers, one more flutter of lashes and then she went horribly still. Nothing Sunny did made her move.

Not the screaming or the begging. Not when she pressed her lips against Violet's, tried to feed her air, to force it back into her lungs by sheer will.

Sunny sat beside her the whole night shaking, hands covered in her sister's blood.

There was nothing in her throat. But there had been poison deep inside her body.

* * *

Things get blurry.

Sunny doesn't know how she managed to carry Violet outside. Her sister was slender but she still stood a head taller than Sunny and both girls had been living on stale bread and canned food for months.

She does remember how it felt when Violet's blood seeped into her shirt, how pieces of herself vanished at the spreading wetness.

Sunny blinks and her sister is laying on a pallet of wood, somewhere outside, can't remember where. The night has deepened and the sun has robbed any semblance of life. Nights like these, Violet liked best. Cold enough to wear that lumpy purple scarf that Klaus had knit her years and years ago.

Before Sunny could remember. Before the fires.

She gets lost in her head, trying to fathom reality, to shift it into something quantifiable. Your sister is dead. Violet is dead. The mantra fails to take. Sunny only comes back because there's something hot in her hand that stings, that makes her hiss and jerk away.

She blinks and Violet goes up in flames.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Just like their parents.

She watches and watches and stands too close to the flames and tries to convince herself that Violet would want this. Watches the flames and lets the world turn quiet around her.

* * *

It's been a week or a month, Sunny doesn't care to keep track but she wakes up one morning, showers until her skin is rubbed red and raw, stuffs her meager belonging in Violet's bag and closes the door behind her.

Forces herself to look once more at the pile of ashes where Violet had been, nothing left but a slight indent on the earth where the fire had simmered awhile, burning away the wood and staining the dirt.

Sunny goes to find Klaus.

Just a few nights before Violet died, she had stumbled on something that made the past few years fall away, eyes alight with hope. A needle in the haystack. Could be Klaus. Could be a sign.

Probably not, but probably not, Violet had told Sunny over and over like she was the one who was in danger of getting her hopes crushed.

Sunny bought a train ticket and made her way from city to city, always looking over her shoulder, always sleeping with that stupid knife under her pillow, always bolting the door. When one trail went cold, she found another.

She made her way south, following the directions Violet had scribbled on a piece of paper, tracing her finger over her sister's angled handwriting.

Days passed and then weeks and months followed at a steady unordinary way. Sunny looked for traces of Klaus everywhere. Sometimes she thought she saw him. In crowded bookstores, walking by a cafe window, in foggy cemeteries. Time went slanted, tumbling downhill and Sunny knew she was losing more and more. It was all slipping away.

Sunny couldn't remember the last time she spoke with another person. She still talked to Violet, still saw her sister clear as day, pressed against her shoulder, walking just a little ahead. Violet always liked to lead and Sunny was fine with following. It was what she'd done her entire life anyway. Follow Violet and Klaus. Lost without them.

Violet didn't talk back most of the time but that was okay. Sunny could live with that.

Ten months after Violet, Sunny tracked her brother down to a run down house. Old and bowed but sturdy, almost pleasant if you didn't look at it too close.

They had been in places worse than this but Sunny still had a difficult time imagining her brother living here, out in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere.

Until she crawled in through a window she wrenched open and saw all the books. Couldn't help but smile because it was so like Klaus. Piles and piles, spines of red and black leather spilled across every surface.

Notes scribbled on the walls, pressed there with tacks. Most with his sisters' names on them. He'd been looking for them just as tirelessly. Sunny felt warm, a little of the weight around her shoulders fell away.

She sat and waited, watched the shadows appeared and disappear along the far wall, hands clenched tight in her lap to disguise their shaking. Sat there and didn't realize when she'd fallen asleep.

* * *

Sunny was torn away from her nightmares with a violent jerk, sweat cooling over her body, neck sore from her position against the wall. Ran through the checklist she'd perfected when things got bad, when her mind tried to take control of her body- deep breaths, finding colors, pinched the skin on her arm until her nails left bloody imprints. Fending off panic came with a steep learning curve but Sunny had found what worked and what didn't.

She counted to twenty and stood.

Daylight streamed through the windows, illuminating the room covered in dust. Everything in sight. Shelves and bottles and books and the blankets on the floor covered in a thick layer of dust.

Sunny couldn't breathe for awhile. Thought back to Violet's end, wondered if she might share the same fate. It might even be poetic.

Klaus was long gone and she had been a blind fool to actually let herself hope that this time, she'd found him.

A hot rush through her veins and the world fractured.

Sunny grabbed the closest thing, a book that Klaus had touched, Klaus had read, and threw it as hard as she could. Sound of shattering glass and her scream mingled, echoed in the room, but there was no one to hear. No one to see.

It took awhile for the rage to dampen, for the need to destroy something, anything, to fade and shame crawl in and take its place. Sunny stepped around the glass, found a little broom to brush it into a small pile, crawled back out through the window.

It had started to rain, just a little, slight mist and she found the book a few feet away, rubbed the mud off its pages, muttering a quiet sorry, tucked it under her arm to protect it. Klaus treated his books like children, wouldn't even dog ear them. When he came back for the books, he'd be upset.

She raised her eyes to the sky and let the rain cool her face. When she started to shiver, when she turned to go back inside, she noticed a small trail footprints. Almost hidden by the tall grass that had grown around it but packed earth brown and muddy. Sunny followed it without thought. Because no doubt Klaus had walked it thinking about her and Violet.

At the end of the trail was a grave. On the cross above the small mound of dirt, her brother's name was scrawled.

Sunny stood there, that little book under her arm, no one around for miles and miles and laughed. Because there was no way her road ended with Klaus' grave that she had only found by mistake. Because this was fake. Her brother knew he was being followed. Faking his death was a very Klaus thing to do.

Klaus was clever. Would have found a way out. Wouldn't leave her alone.

But she needed to be sure. That itching at the back of her mind wouldn't leave her alone until she knew for sure. She would dig up the grave and see that nothing was there and then she'd go find her brother.

Sunny found a broken shovel nearby. Probably left by Klaus when he dug the grave before he left again. He'd have wanted to make it look authentic.

Sunny sighed, mildly annoyed that her brother was putting her to work without being there for her to yell at, and began to dig. It was worse when the rain began to fall in earnest. And she was soaked by the time the shovel connected with something hard. Something that sent a jolt down her arm.

There were bones. There was a smell that rose up that made her gag. Rotting flesh and she wondered distantly where Klaus had managed to find a body.

She tried not to look, not to see, but in the end, it was impossible, her eyes drawn to the things that would end up destroying her.

There was Klaus' necklace- their mother's wedding band that he'd wore around his neck. The one thing he never took off.

For all the danger they faced, for all the times they shared breath with death, Sunny hadn't seen this coming.

Even after Violet.

She never expected to be the last Baudelaire.


	2. Chapter 2

I didn't want any flowers,

I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up

and be utterly empty

How free it is, you have no idea how free

-Sylvia Plath

* * *

Sunny couldn't say for sure why she went to find Olaf.

There were a thousand possibilities, each one worse than the last. But Sunny didn't pause to question her motives, didn't bother digging into her psyche, trying to wrangle her thoughts into order.

Those days she existed solely in extremes. None of the grey murky area in between that proved impossible to navigate.

She refused to sleep until the skin beneath her eyes darkened, resembled burst plums, until her ears echoed with phantom noises. And then succumbing to exhaustion, remained trapped between thin sheets for days on end. Staring at the water stained ceiling above her head, committing every crack to memory because thinking of anything else took its toll and Sunny was scraped hollow already.

She refused to eat even when her stomach turned on itself, gnawed empty and unsatisfied, until her limbs shook, until spots appeared across her vision. And then stuffed her mouth with everything in sight only to throw it up moments later.

Sunny didn't do things by halves. Her equilibrium shook loose and the only way she knew she was alive was skating that dangerous area between too much and not enough. The same area that her sister had existed in for years.

And Olaf, more than anything else, was an extreme. Had cemented himself as such the first time he tried to kill them. And a hundred times since.

More than that, he was only one left who knew Violet and Klaus like she had.

The only one who had his plans foiled over and over by the genius of Violet's inventions or the deep well of Klaus' knowledge.

The one who had been witness to years of their bravery and cunning.

Of their goodness.

But in the end, when confronted in the harsh light of day with the truth, Sunny hoped that seeing Olaf would bring out the right pieces in her. Her virtue incited by his villainy because at the moment she didn't feel honorable or brave. Nothing at all like a Baudelaire was supposed to be.

The festering anger that she felt ever since Violet and Klaus hadn't lessened like she hoped it would, hadn't turned into grief. Instead it bubbled white hot, threatening to spill violence, against herself, against others, she didn't know. Was scared to find out.

Under her skin, Sunny felt something new brimming. Something dark.

* * *

Olaf's eyes still shined like marbles. It was the first thing that popped into Sunny's head when he opened the door. How they glittered at her, black holes that betrayed nothing. Looking wholly unsurprised to find her on his doorstep.

She'd forgotten the rush of fear that accompanied his presence. Strange that in the end that was the thing that provided a small semblance of comfort.

Sunny is dead on her feet when she finally makes it there, completely soaked through, mud splattered across every inch. Tremors that reach into her bones even though she isn't cold. A high fever burns two bright spots on her cheeks.

Olaf's theatre troupe is nowhere in sight. Dead probably. The house behind him is utterly still and quiet and for several long seconds, they are the only two people left in the world.

Those eyes don't move away when she pushes her way inside. When she drops her bag and pretends to look around. It's all so close to what she imaged that she feels dejavu course through her, feels like she's stood in this exact spot before.

There's a hundred problems with the house that Olaf obviously has no interest in fixing. Crooked shelves, mold growing in dark patches along the ceiling, unwashed plates, dozens of empty bottles rolling on the floor.

Sunny takes it all in quickly but it's his face that her eyes find again, drawn like a magnet.

Same curling smile from her nightmares before she discovered there were worse things out there to dream about than a greedy murdering Count. Same smooth, drawling voice that demands attention.

Same tattoo just barely peeking out from beneath his pant leg, faded along the edges.

Time hasn't changed him like it has her. He's still utterly recognizable, still fits into the imprint that she recalls from childhood. A distinct Olaf shape.

He doesn't touch her when she searches out a spare room, when she informs him in no uncertain terms that she will be sleeping there tonight. She stands ramrod straight, chin jutted out, daring him to react. To push or pull or use the barbed words that he reserves for orphans with fortunes. Not that she has one anymore.

She waits for the slap, for the knife, for history to start again. A repeat and this time she knows the right steps. She knows how to play this game.

But Olaf just smiles at her like he plucked those thoughts straight from her mind with those gangly calloused fingers. When he walks out and shuts the door behind him, Sunny's breath catches inside her throat, a sound like a whine escaping before she can wish it back.

He doesn't even slam it, doesn't make the beams rattle, doesn't make a single sound and Sunny feels there is something deeply unfair about that.

He was supposed to be the villain, bring into obvious light the differences that existed between the two of then. To prove that Sunny could still be good without her brother and sister there to show her how. Needs him to prove that all her morals weren't intertwined with theirs.

Because they were dead and she was not.

And Olaf doesn't even give her that.

* * *

Sunny debates killing her old guardian. She sits up that first night, turns the idea over in her mind the way Violet would turn over a challenging puzzle. Plans it right down to the weapon, the force it would take, the struggle he might put up, the creaky step she'd have to jump over on the stairs. Certainly not easy but doable.

And it wouldn't even be murder because she would just be protecting others from him. People that Olaf would hurt in the future because it's an undeniable truth. Siblings die. Fire burns. Olaf destroys everything he touches.

There are countless strangers out there that would no doubt shake her hand and thank her, praise her as a hero if they could. If they knew. If they could only see what he was, what he's done to her, to her family.

Violet and Klaus had this same chance pass them by. Had that rare opportunity to see Olaf defenseless and they hadn't killed him and look where it got them. They should have known then and Sunny does now, learned the hard way. She sees it all a hundred times over until it's been perfected. Go go go. Do it.

She bites down on her knuckle until she tastes blood, until she smells the sharp tang of copper, tries to keep the sounds trapped behind her lips.

Sunny sits on that rickety bed the entire night and doesn't move.

In the end, she doesn't kill Olaf, not yet.

In the end, she starts a fire.


	3. Chapter 3

You don't get to die and be born the same.

You come back, but you come back wrong.

This is the price you pay for resurrection.

-Nathaniel Orion

* * *

It happens on the anniversary of Violet's death.

One year and Sunny still wakes with dirty sheets tangled around her ankles, a scream caught somewhere inside her throat. Still fights to convince herself that it is sweat instead of blood on her hands.

If reasoning with panic ever worked before, it doesn't anymore. She spends the remainder of bad nights curled into the corner of the bathroom, pressed tight against the wall or crammed beside the toilet, cheek lulling on the cool tile. Hours pass like that, each one interchangeable as the last, a kind of dizzying blur.

But for as loud as the world gets in those moments, Sunny always notices when he comes. She doesn't hear him, not unless he wants her to. She just knows between one blink and then next that he's there. Like lying under a bright sky with head tilted up towards the sun, eyes closed, and still noticing the clouds that pass unseen overhead. But Olaf isn't the sun. He's something else entirely, a thousand times more complicated, grey and murky, uncomfortably raw like a nerve laid bare. Look away. Look away. She might be disappointed if he weren't.

In the six months she's spent in his company, Sunny has finally decided that there ins't yet a name for what Olaf is to her. Perhaps she might sleep better if she were able to pin one on him, quantify him or dissect him like Violet would do to her projects. But Sunny has never had Violet's proclivity for numbers and figures, for black and white. Sunny wasn't fated to live a life dictated by moral simplicity and it seems Olaf wasn't either.

It's unsettling- the way that life has bound them together with that particular string, especially since Sunny doesn't want any kind of connection to the man, no matter how faint. Doesn't want to pity him or understand him, but more often than not, Sunny feels herself tipping in that direction. The once easy grip of hatred has distanced, harder to reach, harder to really mean. She never knew how tiring it was to keep resentment alive until it began to flicker out.

Fine tremors run through her body when he opens the door. Only the dim light of stars spill through the windows, caked with pale dust, a hundred skeleton fractures.

One year.

One year and the only thing left of Violet was ash. Maybe a few bone spinners, barely a handful. Scattered among tall trees, blown to and fro by the wind and Sunny feels a sharp pang of regret that she hadn't thought of keeping Violet's ashes, of carrying them with her in some jar where she could set them on the floor by the head of her bed. At night, she would even be able to stretch out her fingers and stroke the glass casing. Violet being dead certainly hadn't stopped Sunny from talking to her sister incessantly but it would have been nice to have something of Violet to look at while she did so. Might soothe that pestering, feverish voice in the back of her thoughts that said she was this much closer to losing her mind. Her sister's life gone in a flash like it was never there at all. And Klaus- there were hundreds of possibilities, countless nights spent in speculation over his death. A betrayal from inside VFD itself because for as many friends they had made, there were just as many enemies. A horrible accident or an attack from a wild animal would be anti-climatic considering all the dangers they had faced and triumphed over prior but entirely plausible. And then there was Olaf or one of his associates, a nighttime visit suspended under the cover of darkness. A knife or a gun or poison or the blunt force of something hard and heavy. All possible, all too easy to imagine and Sunny would spend the rest of her life not knowing.

Even worse, maybe Klaus had gotten tired of waiting. Her brilliant brother who craved connection, who found solace among the pages of other great minds. Her sensitive brother who had been alone for so much longer than she. Who might have sought escape in a moment of weakness and when it was all done and over with, a lost stranger might have stumbled upon the body and dug a grave, buried the boy without even knowing his name. Might have said a prayer over his body, might have tried to clean the blood and dirt off him, might have chosen that spot under the tree because in the summer it would bloom so beautifully.

Sunny only hoped it had been painless when it happened, not that it offered much comfort but she still remembered Violet's messy end, full of panic and desperate flailing limbs. Wanting something better for her brother seemed a small consolation prize.

Sunny had begun her day with the burn of alcohol that was growing more and more familiar. As soon as she realized what _this_ day was, she searched out a bottle with fumbling fingers and hadn't stopped.

It was gin that she chose, told herself that it was a testament for Violet but that fantasy hadn't lasted long because Violet wasn't here. Hadn't been for one year. It was unthinkable and so Sunny drank more, to make sense of it all, of how she had survived this long without her siblings when her entire life had been set before her feet by them. Violet and Klaus had been the two reasons that she made all other decisions by and now, Sunny felt adrift like a compass spinning round and round with no point of origin. No North Star. Nothing but violent Counts and empty rooms, each crammed full of more memories than the last.

The excuses to drink only lasted as long as it took the drink to kick in and once it did, Sunny didn't need a reason other than the fact that it took all her reasons away.

Choked on the burn of alcohol inside her throat, forced her stomach to hold it, to keep it down, to let it seep past her veins. The second bottle came easier than the first. A few hours later and her body had given up, raised a white flag and succumbed to blissful darkness.

Sunny is still drunk when she is dragged back to consciousness by the weight of his eyes on her. His tread on the floor is silent even though the floorboards groan something horrible. On nights filled with thunderstorm, the house reverberates like it is likely to fall apart around her at any given moment.

He pauses at the foot of her bed and the urge to flinch is there because she knows what he sees. Silly drunk girl who is wrapped up in self-pity, unable or unwilling to get out of bed more days than not. Even in the darkness, her face burns with shame. There are circles beneath her eyes because though she might lay in bed for hours on end, it is a rare thing to actually sleep. Her hair is tangled because she can't be bothered to run a comb through it. Because the last time she looked in a mirror, her hair had been so much longer than she remembered and for a moment it had been Violet looking back. Sunny had shattered the mirror with her fist, shards of broken glass stuck inside her palms, little white scars still dotted her fingers like pale freckles.

The fear she holds for Olaf is a distant thing these days, easily ignored. A quiet pestering in the back of her mind that rears its ugly head on rare occasions. Just not when she's drunk because that's when Sunny likes to push him. Nothing else makes her feel so wonderfully and horribly alive. Nothing else seems so vital in those moments as searching for the limitations of his control. And wondering what he will do should she ever find it. There have been a few close calls, moments where his restraint has frayed to the barest edges but Olaf always manages to check his temper. They both know that the day he finally loses it, the day he allows himself a second of reprieve, she is dead. Most nights Sunny wonders why but this night, she has no energy for the games they play.

Instead she fumbles around the floor, searching for another bottle and makes a self satisfied noise when she fishes one out of the darkness. Then with her eyes screwed tight against the sting, she lifts it to her lips. Before she can gets more than a mouthful, the bottle is snatched away. Olaf hurls it across the room where it smashes into the wall, a hundred shards catching the moonlight on the way down.

Olaf's voice has reached a deadly hiss before she realizes he is speaking to her. The world shakes beneath her. Hands drag her upwards, hands that hold her steady despite the swaying of her own limbs. She ducks her head to the side when her stomach protests and gives a steep lurch but Olaf is already dragging her out of her room, down the stairs, out into the cold night. She stumbles after him, unable to do anything else, a sudden dizzying fear sweeping through her that he will release his iron grip around her wrist and she will float away into the dark sky. A balloon untethered.

It's the middle of the night and there is no one around to gawk at the man pulling a girl with unwashed clothes and long tangled hair behind him. She trips over her own feet, drunk and woozy and floating but Olaf doesn't slow, doesn't give any indication that she is there at all other than the way his fingers clench tighter and tighter until she can feel the bruises forming beneath her clothes.

When they finally pause, it takes Sunny several long breaths to center the world, to stop its swaying. Only when she feels as though her stomach has stopped trying to escape through her throat, she looks up and freezes.

Because past the glass and her own murky reflection, Sunny sees rows and rows of books. Olaf has taken her to a library and she has the bizarre urge to laugh. But she bites it back down because she isn't sure she could stop once she started.

They are all alone on a deserted back street, Olaf standing directly behind her, so much taller than she and Sunny's eyes latch onto him in their reflection, studying the way his jaw flexes beneath skin, always in motion, never content to remain stagnant. Never content to let anything happen to him. Olaf must be the one moving the pieces, scattering them across the board, one bump and they fall over the edge. It's a long way down and peering into his eyes, Sunny thinks she may have caught sight of the bottom.

The silence between them doesn't last long, it never does, and Sunny thinks that maybe he's about to kill her because he's reaching inside his pocket, fumbling for something. She waits, doesn't even consider running and that should probably worry her but it doesn't because she's about to die and she just wishes that Olaf would hurry up and get on with it.

But when he unfurls his fingers, there is no knife. Just a packet of matches.

"Burn it." He tells her, notching his head at the building beside them in a decidedly impatient manner, like the thing itself is doing him a disservice by not already being covered in flames.

Sunny lets out a sigh that sounds like a band aid being ripped away because _this_, this is what she's been waiting for.

She stands up straighter, emboldened because she knows what to do now that the world has righted itself. Before she can form her face into a snarl, before she can spit out her rejection, he jerks her forward. Closer and closer until she can feel his hot breath pour across her face. "This is why your brother and sister are dead. Because they refused to see the world as it is." The words erupt from his throat in a spew of rage, an old hurt that goes beyond her. "Violet and Klaus were good and it got them dead. Is that what you want?"

She is struck dumb with doubt and maybe that's why the truth spills from her mouth. "I don't know."

Olaf falters, just for a second. The cogs in his head are still turning, taking in this new information, trying to figure what to do with it, how to use it to make it hurt. It's not fun to murder something already dead.

"None of this means anything. That's the point." He tells her, soft now, hand reaching out to trace the sharp slope of her cheekbone. And more than the sharp words and the white hot rage, this is infinitely worse. She trembles beneath his hands, can't remember the last time someone touched her like this. Maybe never. The alcohol still tingles in her blood and she leans more of her weight against Olaf, dizzy.

He opens the matchbook and pulls one out. The night is quiet around them, still, holding its breath. Sunny's eyes are still fixed on Olaf's face when he lights one and she catches the look in his eyes, the light that spills across his features.

Sunny sees.

And then it's a floodgate let loose.

Remembers Violet burning. Remember the fire that they lost Klaus in years before that. Recalls the remains of their first home after it had been turned into a skeleton. Her life's memories, the vital ones that had shaped her have all pivoted around what Olaf is offering. Fire and flames and heat. Bile churns deep inside her stomach.

Slowly Olaf turns her towards the building once more, voice low next to her ear, warmth spilling from his body to hers. Strange that she always assumed he would be so cold. But right now, he's a live flame and she has to hold herself back when all she wants is to push further into the warmth. Her teeth begin to chatter.

"Do you see now? It's all ash already." He presses closer. "There's no changing it. No wishing otherwise."

"Klaus would have loved it here." she hears herself say from a long way off. Only partly because it's true. Through the stain glass windows she can see thousands of books, all crammed together, stacked one atop the other, spines that are old and bent and lovingly careworn, others that are new and proud and straight. Scattered in dark nooks are faded leather couches draped with fuzzy blankets. A thin layer of dust covers the lights, fingerprints smudge the windows. It is a well used bookshop, sings of love everywhere. A treasure that one might stumble upon some back road on a rainy day. "Klaus would love it here." she repeats, like a mantra, looking harder, trying to place her brother inside the room, trying to breathe him back to life with the force of her will alone.

But the room remains empty and dark, not a soul stirs. And Sunny comes back to herself shivering with cold, just noticing that the fog has turned into a thin sprinkling of rain. Her breath hangs in the air, fogging up the window when she leans in closer.

So caught in her musing, Sunny is unable to keep from gasping when Olaf throws a brick through the glass. He smiles his crooked grin before stepping through the window, kicking more of the shards down. When he offers his hand, Sunny takes it without thought, without blinking. It is warmer insider, sheltered from the rain, the sound of it faint and echoing against the roof. The air smells of coffee beans and dust. A safe haven.

The library is good as most are. No doubt owned by a good person, maybe even one with delusions of making the world a better place. Filled with mostly good people on a daily basis, people who appreciated poetry and history and those romance stories that would make most people blush scarlet.

And that goodness still doesn't stop her and Olaf from being there, from staring at it with ill intention. The library being good does nothing at all except provide a target for bad things to go.

"Klaus isn't here, is he?" Olaf whispers, pressing closer still. "But you are."

He takes her hand in his, grips her fingers too tight, enough for a whimper of pain to escape. But she doesn't struggle, caught entirely in Olaf's web, blood already draining from her face.

He places a match in between her fingers, lets her grip the seemingly innocent stick and then in a motion too fast for her to follow, turns the red head into a little flame.

"No kindling more perfect than books." He tells her, pushing his chest against her back. She takes in a deep breath, feels him.

Her head rolls back to meet his shoulder, skin on fire already, the last of gin in the back of her throat. Just like Violet. Oh God. Oh God.

Squeezing her eyes shut didn't help. Just makes her even more aware of the man behind her. Nothing goes away, nothing fades. It all grows more heightened.

Olaf shushes her soft sound of protest, a habit more than anything else.

"You know you want to do it." He whispers, even though there is no one else in sight, because there words are meant for Sunny alone and no one else. No one else could understand them, no one living. She wonders if Violet or Klaus ever wrestled with this temptation, with the sensual pull of darkness, the ease that it creeps inside. "I see it inside you."

And it's that more than anything else that breaks her. Being seen, being understood, even when she doesn't want to be. Maybe especially then. She is only vaguely aware of the tears that run hot down her cheeks, of her breath that comes in short panicked bursts, sounds like a dying animal might make.

Olaf brings her back when he lights another match, her hand still captured in his, keeping her steady. She has a vague notion that if he were to let her go, she would vanish into the air like smoke. And this time when he reaches forward, towards the paper, towards the kindling, she doesn't protest.

This time she reaches too.

Sunny imagines this is what dying must feel like.

It's such a small start, barely an anything. Weak flames that could be killed with one quick blow, the slightest breeze. A little brightness that sheds light on more of the store, mugs stacked on the counter near bags of coffee, carpet beneath that looks to have been stained by footprints and spilt wine.

But the seconds tick by and it gains strength, reaches higher, little spirals of smoke that make her eyes water but she doesn't step away. Neither does Olaf and she feels heat burning her from both sides.

But Sunny is outside herself now, light and liable to float away without the weight of the bones inside her. Watching herself from a great height.

Watches the flames consume everything. Watches the destruction, listens to Olaf calling it beautiful, reverent and awed. This is what he worships. The inevitable chaos that comes from allowing yourself to be more human than not and the crushing realization that comes along with it that people are more bad than good. But along with that comes something else too, just as shocking and freeing. The world is mostly bad and you don't owe it to the people that live there to be good.

The fire is out of their control within minutes just as it's supposed to be, a weight falling from her shoulders because Sunny couldn't stop it even if she wanted to.

She doesn't.

Sunny feels freshly birthed, new to the world and old at the same time. She doesn't bother wondering how such a thing is possible because in the past hour, everything has changed. Up is down and people are so very bad. It's something she's seen evidence of her whole life- violence and death and a selfish selfish world but to take all that proof, all those facts and come out with the glaring observation that Olaf has bestowed upon her hadn't occurred to her until this very moment. And it hits her with the force of a gunshot.

It's like a simple math problem that Sunny has been doing wrong her entire life. One plus one equals two. That simple. The world is bad and so can she be.

She swears that for a moment she can see her siblings through the flames, seized by the bizarre desire to charge through the wall of orange and red. Olaf's hand holds her back when she tries to steps forward and reach out, a reflex that's so deeply engraved inside her Sunny doubts it could ever be cut out. A sounds like a sob escapes her lips as she watches the library burn. Olaf pulls her outside slowly enough that the heat is still painful, a brand against her reddening skin. She doesn't struggle, doesn't try to rush him. If anything, she drags her feet, unwilling to leave, trying to linger just a few seconds more. Afraid that her newfound epiphany will be lost with the fire.

And as if Olaf could hear her thoughts, he buries a huff of laugher into her hair. "Don't worry so. There's always more to burn."

For the first time in as long as she can remember, Sunny smiles and means it.


	4. Chapter 4

Then write a poem about the fact

that you've never been faithful to anyone,

have always kept one hand feeling along the walls

for a knob, a hinge, a latch

to release the pressure in the chamber.

-**Seema Reza**

* * *

Years later and Olaf asks if she ever thinks of them.

It's a quiet day and the absence of the chaos Sunny's learned to live with make her nervous. She can't remember the name of the town they find themselves in. The houses are all the same though. Shattered glass on the floor, tattered windows that do little to keep out the winter winds.

Leaky roof above.

Creaky beds below.

The consistency helps to settle her. She's come to know what to expect. Olaf has money that he never uses. The chase of fortune, the act of taking is the goal. The prize ceases to matter once it's been won.

"Who?" She asks even though she knows.

"Violet. Klaus." Even after all this time, even with everything there is between them, messy distorted thing that it is, Olaf still can't help but twist the knife. Never could.

She tries not to keep count anymore, tries to forget those two dates when she lost everything. But year after year, she still does. Suspects they are forever burned onto her memory.

She doesn't breathe, doesn't blink, doesn't react. Olaf chuckles. Sees right through her. He reaches out and strokes down her hand, a single finger dirty with smudges of coal, over her wrists, pauses where she still has Violet's ribbon tied tight over her own pulse. Tugs the frayed edges.

"Who?" She asks again.

Her eyes never stop watering. Her hair never smells of anything but smoke. Ash staines the tips of her fingers black, she can never manage to wash off. Fingers and hands and arms covered in little speckles of burns, evidence that the flames can still reach her. Olaf tells her it's a good look. Sometimes she even believes him.

When the nights are quiet, when there is nothing around to burn, Sunny thinks how her brother and sister would hate her. Hate her like they hated Olaf.

Unlike some things, that never stops hurting. But it's turned into a deep ache rather than the sharp burst of pain it had been.

Still, they have an unspoken accord. She and Olaf dig the things they need from the other, take no account of the harm it is sure to inflict, of the gaps they create, they ways they force each other to fit, greedy snatches. Take and take and take.

And yet after years of tearing out puzzle pieces, they're still here together, tethered by some cruel invisible force.

Olaf mostly takes but there are days when he gives.

Namely when he'd brought her a woman blindfolded, wrists tied behind her back, a seeping wound on the side of her face, crying softly. Even with her face covered, Sunny knew who it was. It would have been impossible not to with the dangerous wobbling heels and ruby red nails. Jewels pressed into the fabric of her gown. Esme was still beautiful, even with the new lines around her eyes, even with the black mascara trailing tears down her cheeks.

Beautiful rich Esme who had a penchant for poison. Who'd begged for mercy right until the moment that Sunny put a bullet between her eyes. Her body had jerked once and then collapsed in a clumsy heap like all the bones had evaporated. Sunny had seen dead bodies before, dying bodies even, but she'd never been the one who'd caused it.

Each time it gets a little easier.

There are rules to follow though. People bad enough to warrant her actions, enough to keep her from going mad from the weight of all the lives ended. The possibilities are limitless because the world is a big place, filled with the same breed of people.

She thinks back on the last letter, the one from mother and father, the one filled with childish ideologies, filled with lies that her parents meant as a kindness.

Sunny does bad things to bad people. Olaf hasn't pushed her further than that, not yet.

Killing Esme feels good in a way Sunny hadn't expected it to and for her death alone, she doesn't spare a single second of guilt over.

Time passes and Olaf still won't claim responsibility but he also doesn't deny he played a part. She doesn't ask anymore, isn't sure she wants to know.

She could still change, turn things around. The possibility of another life rises on the distance at times like a mirage. Wavering close enough to touch and then gone by the time she turns her head.

She wants another life but knows she no longer deserves one.

There is hunger when he touches her now. Tangled heat that she isn't afraid to get burnt by anymore, whether it's for her or who she was or what she used to represent.

She still wonders if he might kill her. A small part of her suspects this is why she found him in the first place, the thing that she couldn't admit to back then, but now Sunny wonders if that is why she's still alive.

Because he knows she wants it be over already.

She hates hates hates him but she needs him all the same and no amount of self-loathing has changed that despite it being weak and pathetic and a betrayal to her dead siblings, to the person she used to be.

But there's no one left that matters.

No more lines to cross and Sunny feels a rush of fear at that realization.

Because the only left that makes her feel alive is obliterating every moral code she used to have, proving that she has even further to fall.

Wonderfully, horribly alive. A soft thing surrounded by jagged edges.

And now she has reached the bottom and there's nothing worse she can do. No one left. Nowhere to go.

Nothing but the matches in her pocket that her fingers find like instinct, like muscle memory, again and again and again.


End file.
